Reaction sharp to ‘gay’ sex ruling

June 26, 2003

Reaction from groups opposed to “gay” sex was quick and sharp following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this morning rejecting a Texas law banning homosexual intercourse, with one organization predicting the decision would “awaken the sleeping giant.”

“This decision will serve as a wakeup call to the majority of Americans who believe in traditional marriage and oppose same-sex unions,” said Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, a public-interest law firm that filed a brief urging justices to uphold the law.

“Today’s decision is a very narrow one because it only applies to laws in a handful of states,” Staver said. “However, taking away any rights of the states to regulate same-sex sexual conduct should raise the concerns of everyone who believes in preserving traditional marriage.”

In rejecting the law, the high court said in its 6-3 ruling that states cannot punish homosexual couples for engaging in sex acts that are legal for heterosexuals.

In defending the law, however, Texas state officials argued it promoted the institutions of marriage and family and insisted communities have the right to choose their own standards.

“There is no constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy,” said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of the Liberty Legal Institute, which also filed an amicus brief, on behalf of nearly 70 Texas legislators. “Read the Constitution as many times as you’d like. It’s not there.”

Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group, said the law in general “has historically respected and protected the marital union and has distinguished it from acts outside that union, such as fornication, adultery and sodomy.”

“To extend homosexual sodomy the same protections given to the marital union would undermine the definition of marriage and could open the door for homosexual marriage,” Connor, an attorney, said.

Now that the Texas law has been overturned, Connor said, “homosexual activists will use the ruling to legally challenge the definition of marriage as the union between one man and one woman.”

Until the 1960s, every state prohibited sodomy, but Texas was one of just 13 states in which a law exists and one of only four that banned same-sex sodomy only. The rarely enforced laws carry penalties ranging from fines to 10 years in prison.

Writing for the majority in today’s ruling, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the Texas law “demeans the lives of homosexual persons.”

In a statement, the Human Rights Campaign supported the high court’s decision.

“This is an historic day for fair-minded Americans everywhere,” said HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch. “We are elated and gratified that the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has seen discriminatory state sodomy laws for what they are – divisive, mean-spirited laws that were designed to single out and marginalize an entire group of Americans for unequal treatment.”

But other groups saw the decision as a politically motivated attempt to change the way Americans think about traditional sex-related acts.

“This case is all about a small group attempting to force their agenda on the rest of the country, since they could not win it through the democratic process,” Shackleford said. “The Constitution does not change overnight on the whim of judges to legislate morality for the rest of the country. This decision is wrong and emphasizes the importance of having judicial-restraint justices on the court.”

Staver agreed. “The split decision underscores the importance of the next Supreme Court appointment, not only on the issue of abortion but now on the issue of same-sex unions,” he said.

Michael Adams, an attorney and spokesman for Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which brought the case, insisted opponents have been overstating the implications.

“For us, the case asks a germane, basic question, which is whether the government has the right to invade the privacy of any citizen in this country,” he said.

However, Staver countered, “regulating homosexual conduct and marriage is the right of the people, to be exercised through the legislative, rather than judicial branches of government.”

“Today’s decision has awakened a sleeping giant and will galvanize and reinvigorate the majority of Americans who believe in traditional marriage but have ignored the radical agenda of the same-sex marriage movement,” Staver said. “The goal of the radical homosexual agenda is to eliminate any and all laws regulating consensual sexual conduct.”

A noted woman’s group was also upset by the decision.

“The ruling … comes from Supreme Court justices who believe in a ‘living’ and ‘evolving’ theory of the Constitution – it’s as if the Founders wrote it on a blackboard and gave them an eraser and chalk,” said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America, which also filed a brief in the case supporting the Texas law.

She sees further erosion of laws against other sex-related crimes.

“If there’s no rational basis for prohibiting same-sex sodomy by consenting adults, then state laws prohibiting prostitution, adultery, bigamy and incest are at risk,” she said.

“No doubt, homosexual activists will try to bootstrap this decision into a mandate for same-sex marriage,” added Sandy Rios, president of CWA.

The decision was also a blow to the nation’s historically Christian-based standards of conduct, said a Wisconsin group.

“The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the law which criminalizes sodomy in Texas is a lawless decision which flies in the face of the foundational law upon which this nation was founded, the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” Wisconsin Christians United said in a statement.

“And so America slips deeper into anarchy and becomes even more deserving of the judgment Almighty God is even now beginning to visit on this nation,” the group said.